Carbon dioxide is a kind of greenhouse gas, while it can be utilized as a resource of carbon and oxygen. How to highly efficiently utilize the carbon dioxide resource has already become a hot spot in current studies. At present, methods for producing poly(carbonate-ether)polyols by using a double metal cyanide (DMC) as a catalyst and using carbon dioxide and an epoxide as raw materials have been widely reported. Kuyper (U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,826,887, 4,826,953), Hinz (U.S. Pat. No. 6,173,599B1), etc., have reported methods for producing poly(carbonate-ether)polyols by using a polypropylene glycol having a low molecular weight as an initiator, a Zn3[Co(CN)6]2-based double metal cyanide as a catalyst, and carbon dioxide and propylene oxide as raw materials. However, by producing a poly(carbonate-ether)polyol by using the catalytic system described above, the polymerization reaction is performed at a temperature of 110° C. or higher in order to pursue a relatively high reactivity. In this way, it unavoidably results in a very low content of carbonate units (<20%) and a very high content of the byproduct propylene carbonate (>20%). The generation of the byproduct not only wastes production raw materials, but also increases the cost for separation. However, the reaction time will be greatly elongated by improving the content of carbonate units in the poly(carbonate-ether)polyol via a simple cooling method, and the requirement for production is not met.
Therefore, a method of producing a poly(carbonate-ether)polyol which has a short reaction time and generates less byproduct propylene carbonate is in urgent need at present.